Mid-month monochromes; black and white photography musings!

Good evening, Hive! It’s been a weird day. There’s some kind of confounding cosmic energy that’s been difficult to navigate. I almost took a pass on tonight’s blog post, but I steered things back to a more ideal trajectory. Something was up at Hive account@caffetto. The coffee shop unceremoniously closing at 9:00p.m. without any explanation and the staff worked seemed to be on edge. Maybe I’m reading too much in to it, but the cafe is such an extension of myself, it left me feeling uneasy. It was actually Hive account@lovejoy’s return to Hive that compelled me to get this post made before bed.

I do have some art to share. Sort of another pleasant result of working on Dark Pinup Act Two. There is an entire tier within the NFT set called, “Noirs”. These are black and whites of the entire collection. Some really shine. The higher key images tend to accentuate dramatic features of the models, like brows, lips and eyes, whereas the darker images capture a pulp or noir aesthetic; something of a 1940’s classic film. I used to do these blog posts of just black and white photography more often. I’m not sure why I stopped, but this’ll be a step towards that end.

Black and white imagery is a really delicate balance. I’ll refer to Hive account@eveuncovered, one of my favorite photographers, not just on Hive, but ever. She is masterful at walking that line of creating form and drama, while retaining expression [often times enhanced by the play of light with monochrome images], texture and detail in clothing, skin, fabric, etc. I used to struggle with captivating black and white images but the ongoing hardware upgrades of my equipment have alleviated some of that.

Some of the my earliest photos were taken with a Nikon D7000 and D80. Although Nikon is known for handling low light well, these cameras would result in undesirable grain and ISO noise, most noticeably with black and white processing. The D750 was a massive step forward, and most recently, I’ve been shooting with a Nikon Z6II which has been a game changer. I can see that quality improve drastically in my most recent photos as monochromes. Just a few, but I’ll be sharing more black and white Old Hollywood style photos again soon. Thanks for reading!